Apply "Required" fields to "New", "Open" and "Pending" status

Ticket fields which are mandatory to fill-in ("Required"), are marked with an asterisk, "*", each time a new ticket form is open:

The "Required" property of the field is set at the Admin + Manage + Ticket Fields menu:

The way it works now is: " Field cannot be blank when an agent solves a ticket".

But the application should always check if a Required field is missing and force the agent to fill-in the required field prior to applying any change in a ticket or submitting it for all the possible statuses: New, Open, Pending or Solved.

The impact of the current situation is that many in progress tickets (not Solved) may have missing values for some Required fields which are essential. That information is critical for the handling of reports and metrics in many cases.

Ideally we would also be able to choose which statuses trigger the mandatory field.

Our use case is that we have an automation that solves a ticket after 10 days on pending. As a result these tickets often have missing mandatory fields. So it would be fine for us to not have to fill out mandatory fields when a ticket is open or on hold, but should be mandatory when pending or solved.

This would be very useful for us too. We have multiple agents working tickets and escalating them to other agents. We need the ability to make ticket and agent only ticket fields mandatory before submitting it as Open, Pending or On Hold.

I would also like to see this feature implemented because we share tickets with a different Zendesk domain we need to make sure that all the relevent fields are entered before the ticket is shared automatically.

In searching your forum/threads, this request has come up time and time again, for years on end (at least since 2011...really??), with countless customers and use cases already provided.

I think it would be nice/appropriate for Zendesk to comment on the status/feasibility of this as opposed to kicking the can down the road another 6-7 years with "send us detailed use cases you guys!"

1) Is this functionality in current development?

2) If not, why not? Is it far more technically challenging than it would seem/appear, or is this more so a case of your product & exec teams prioritizing other features for development based on your own schema?

You're right, there are a number of long-standing threads that should have been dealt with years ago. There were some gaps in process and policy in the way the community was being managed, and product feedback responsiveness depended upon the interest and availability of any individual product manager. This resulted in the years-long threads with no responses, as you have called out, and we recognize that this was not the most effective way to manage this forum. This is changing and new processes are being implemented to push for final decisions and close out those long-standing threads, and get decisions and close out new requests more efficiently.

Regarding sharing whether or not something is currently in development: for legal and competitive reasons, we can't always share things publicly until the last stages of development, typically shortly before something goes into EAP. This is part of why our Community Product Feedback Guidelines state that we can't always share timelines, and that any we do share are subject to change without notice and are not to be interpreted as a guarantee.

We do try to be as transparent as possible, however, we're not always at liberty to disclose the reasoning for a given product decision. Again, this is a public forum, so we are sometimes limited in exactly how much of our strategic decision making we can put in writing in this space.

The product feedback topics are meant to be a space for conversation so that users can share how they're using our tools and help product managers understand their needs, but it should not be viewed as a case/resolution system.

We appreciate everyone's participation and feedback, as well as your patience as we continue to make improvements to the Zendesk community.

A better way to approach this might be to consider how getting ticket data/fields populated *before* close enhances the value Zendesk's reporting features can provide Zendesk's clients. In sum, client need is aligned very closely here with Zendesk strategic objectives of delivering critical info to support/org leadership.

How this is being lost on your teams is beyond me. If your dashboards/ticket data is *only* effective on closed tickets you are missing out on providing massive value in driving insight into what is going on in your customer real-time open/unsolved ticket queues.

Currently, customers pay a $1/month/per agent tax to get this functionality through an add-on app. You are creating barriers to delivering on high value use cases. Roll it into the core product already.

Not the most eloquent way of solving the problem but you can achieve similar functionality with triggers and automations.

Trigger solution:

If Status is changed to ________

AND

(Mandatory Field 1 is NOT PRESENT

OR

Mandatory Field 2 is NOT PRESENT

...

...)

Then set the Status to Open and send an email reminder to the updater to fill out the mandatory fields.

********

Automation solution (for people who have an automation that sets from Pending --> Solved after x hrs no reply from the user):

If it's been x hours since the ticket was put on Pending

AND

Status = Pending

AND

(Mandatory Field 1 is NOT PRESENT

OR

Mandatory Field 2 is NOT PRESENT

...

...)

Then set the Status to Open and send an email reminder to the assignee to fill out the mandatory fields.

This automation will re-open a pending ticket after x hours of no response if the mandatory fields aren't filled out. This means you'll need a second automation which closes a pending ticket after x hours of no response AND ALL the mandatory fields are filled out.

P.S. @Brian, people pay for this? My charge for the above is $0.50c/month/agent. I'll delete this post ASAP and give you $0.25c/month/agent for every customer with this problem that you send my way ;)

To add to this discussion, I can understand why Zendesk has made the functionality mandatory on Solve only. Because that's when the ticket has supposedly been resolved and therefore all the mandatory fields should have been filled out.

But for Open, On-hold and Pending, the agent might not have collected all the relevant data yet, therefore it doesn't make sense to make fields mandatory based on those values. Unless the field you want to make mandatory is something like 'Reason Ticket Is On-Hold'.

My suggestion would be to keep it as mandatory on Solve OR a certain value of another field.

E.g. Custom field = Stage of Insurance Claim.

If the Stage of Insurance Claim = Stage 1, then Mandatory Fields 1 & 2 should be filled out.

If the Stage of Insurance Claim = Stage 2, then Mandatory Fields 3 & 4 should be filled out.